The Iraqis read the writing on the wall

In the midst of renewed carnage in Iraq and the election results in the US, the Iraqis realize that the US is on its way out. And the Iraqi president is planning talks with Iran and Syria.

Not really huge news...as I've written here before, this was always coming anyway. But because of the gross mismanagement of post war Iraq by the Bush Administration, and because tribalism and Islam trumps `democracy' in this part of the world every time it's merely been speeded up.

Iraq's Shiites are, by and large, controlled by Iran and the Iranian backed militias,who also are initiating much of the sectarian violence. The US military acquiesed to this when they left Sadr City on Iraqi Prime Minister Maliki's orders, without rescuing the US soldier taken hostage or eliminating the Shiite death squads holed up there. Iraqi President Talibani is just acknowledging reality by dealing with the new order of things. Not that Maliki hasn't pressed the flesh with his jihad pals in Iran before, of course.

The Main Stream Media has made a great deal of hay out of a leaked Pentagon assesment of Iraq with three options: "go big,"- send in more troops for a short term blitz - "go long" - shrink the forces on the ground but stay longer - and "go home" - ditch Iraq and pull out.

The first option merely commits more American troops for the same non-objective, the second one is a step is the Democrats `phased retreat redeployment program, and the last option sends a message to our friends and our enemies in the region that is harmful, to say the least.

Of course, there's a fourth option, but one that I doubt the Bush Administration has the wisdom to take advantage of.

The real way to `solve' Iraq, or course, would be to forcefully confront the Shiite militias and the two nations who continue to orchestrate the violence and chaos, Iran and Syria. They've always been the key to this campaign from the beginning, and anyone who thought that they would allow a model Arab democracy on their borders to give their own people unwelcome ideas was sadly mistaken.

Since it's looks doubtful that President Bush has the stones to do that, I would hope that he would take what I consider to be the common sense route, team up with our only real allies in Iraq and maintain a strategic presence there for th efuture confrontation with Iran and the emerging Shiite bloc that is sure to come.

With people like James Baker and Robert Gates in the saddle and Bush desperate to ride off peacefully into the sunset in a couple of years, I wouldn't bet the farm on it.